With the advent of the personal computer and networking technologies, client/server application programs were written that helped to improve worker productivity in small and medium sized companies. Since most such companies lacked the resources to staff an Information Technology Department, and could not generate their own customized applications, most companies implemented standardized application program packages at a fraction of their development cost.
However, the computer technology industry has been rapidly evolving over the course of the last decade. Networking technologies that once dominated the industry have been supplanted by TCP/IP, the communication protocol that underlies the ubiquitous World-Wide-Web and the Internet. However, networks often suffer from a wide variety of problems that can directly impact application software performance. Consequently, users depend upon technical support personnel to troubleshoot and repair countless system problems that may arise from these network related problems that prevent users from accessing application programs, such as viruses or denial of service attacks.
In addition, new computer languages, such as Java, have developed to implement new technologies in the present Internet computing paradigm. But application programs that were written before such languages were even conceived cannot take advantage of the functionality provided by such new computer languages.
In addition, many standardized application programs were designed to run on communication protocols that are incompatible with TCP/IP. Unfortunately, these application program packages may also have been designed on an older client/server model and not an Internet-based model. Consequently, a complete source code rewrite for these application programs would be necessary to implement them in a modern Internet-based computing paradigm. Such a rewrite would not only be cost prohibitive, but might also exceed a mid-sized business's resources. Further, the application program may no longer be supported by the original software developers and vendors. A mid-sized company that wishes to improve their access to key computer applications would be faced with a dilemma of either purchasing a new application program and incurring the additional cost of converting data accumulated over many years into a new format used by such a new application program, or incurring the maintenance expense for a legacy application program and forsaking the freedom of accessing the application through the ubiquitous Internet.
Therefore, there exists a need for a computing platform that can transform older, legacy applications into a modern-day, Internet-based application without bearing the expense and effort of rewriting source code. In addition, there exists a need for a robust platform that provides a consistent application program performance without being affected by changes made by a user, a virus, or other malicious software such as Trojan horses, spyware, or adware.